Anthrovision Vaneasa Online Journal 6.1 | 2018 Film in Ethnographic Exhibitions Encountering Films in the Estonian National Museum Karin Leivategija Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/3390 DOI: 10.4000/anthrovision.3390 ISSN: 2198-6754 Publisher VANEASA - Visual Anthropology Network of European Association of Social Anthropologists Electronic reference Karin Leivategija, « Encountering Films in the Estonian National Museum », Anthrovision [Online], 6.1 | 2018, Online since 31 December 2018, connection on 28 July 2019. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/3390 ; DOI : 10.4000/anthrovision.3390 This text was automatically generated on 28 July 2019. © Anthrovision Encountering Films in the Estonian National Museum 1 Encountering Films in the Estonian National Museum Karin Leivategija Introduction 1 The Estonian National Museum’s (ENM) new building opened in October 2016 in the city of Tartu. It moved from its previous location in the city centre to a former Soviet military airfield, which is located in the border of the city.1 The aim of the new building was to establish a place of culture and memory, as well as one of contemporary society and social dialogue that offers representations of everyday life in Estonia from the Stone Age to the present. Instead of presenting undisputed knowledge and delivering monologues, the new building and exhibitions aim to provide a space for dialogue – to become a forum that is inclusive and encourages debate in contrast to a temple that is authoritative and beyond reproach (Delgado 2009: 8; Cameron 1971). 2 The ENM was founded in 1909 as an ethnographic museum. Its focus was on collecting, researching, preserving and exhibiting the artefacts of Estonia’s fading peasant culture. Today the museum engages with traditional as well as contemporary life, and with tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The ENM is a centre for essentially ethnological but increasingly multidisciplinary research, and the mediator of diverse ideas and values that mixes traditional methods with innovative approaches in scientific research as well as exhibition making. Anthrovision, 6.1 | 2018 Encountering Films in the Estonian National Museum 2 Figure 1: Estonian National Museum. Project by DGT Architects. DGT Architects (2016): “With a sensitive implementation on this site, the National Museum becomes a continuation of the airfield – its roof lifting and expanding towards ‘infinite space’ – inviting the visitor to enter into the landscape and into the heart of the museum. DGT’s design creates an open house for public activities – exhibition, performance, learning – a place of gathering and interaction, bringing people together to celebrate a rich, if sometimes painful, history” (Internet Source 1). Photo by Arp Karm. 3 The name of the permanent exhibition about Estonian life and culture is Encounters. There are a number of subsections that among other topics focus on independence, life during Soviet occupation, domestic life, language, food and environment. The exhibition expresses the overall idea of the importance of dialogues that the museum wishes to create and encourage. A dialogue between the visitor and exhibitions, a dialogue between the present and the past, and a dialogue between the people and the museum is essential. However, most importantly, a dialogue in today’s society is aimed to be encouraged. 4 Traditionally an object-based museum, the ENM has integrated numerous contemporary approaches in the new permanent exhibition. An immediately noticeable feature is the substantial number of screens in the exhibition space. Although the use of films is not novel in museum exhibitions, the purposes for using this medium have broadened and films are no longer only used as illustrations or auxiliary material to support the understanding of the exhibited objects. Films in Encounters aim to represent topics that an object cannot always effectively communicate, often because of the complexity of people’s cognitive worlds. 5 The aim of this paper is to analyse the ways in which films in Encounters explore and convey life experiences and support the concept of dialogue-creating. The paper describes the content, style and methods of the films that were produced for Encounters. I explore approaches in common for documentaries and reenactment films in a museum setting. Anthrovision, 6.1 | 2018 Encountering Films in the Estonian National Museum 3 From Stories of Freedom to Stories of Consumption: Films Produced for Encounters 6 Film in various forms holds a solid position in Encounters. Most of the audiovisual material was specially produced for this exhibition and is curated by museum professionals and film production team Allfilm. The documentary content was created with the contribution of various contemporary people living in Estonia, and the fictional or reenacted films are largely based on historical documents.2 7 The films alone do not provide the visitors direct means for a two-way communication; however, they are not hidden behind a wall, neither muffled with headphones, but instead have a clear relationship with the surrounding exhibits and interactive screens, a number of which are developed to invite the visitors to create content for the museum.3 8 The concept of dialogue in the films does not necessarily emerge as a verbal interaction between two parties. Instead, the dialogical features in Encounters are mostly to be seen in the juxtaposition of different views (Rattus 2016a: 160). Enabling the visitors to interpret the material potentially motivates them to become active participants who give personal meaning to the themes presented in the films. 9 The main author of the films is Estonian filmmaker Marko Raat. He divides his exhibition films into two broad categories – processes and portraits. Process films are mainly observational documentaries and portrait films are scripted reenactments carried out by professional actors. Raat’s main questions concerned how to present often invisible and ordinary personal stories in a way that those support and complement each other (Raat 2017). Besides Raat’s films, I will be analysing my own video exhibit, titled Stories of Freedom that mainly deals with immaterial topics. It is a cumulative account about freedom – an abstract but intrinsically human concept that is represented by seventy- four 2-4 minute video interviews conducted with contemporary habitants of Estonia. Stories of Freedom 10 I started working at the ENM in 2014. It was two years before the opening of the new building and every person in the museum as well as hundreds of project-based employees were working on producing the new permanent exhibitions.4 I started a visual research project about how people perceive freedom, be it in a personal, philosophical or social sense. I ended up conducting 74 filmed interviews with Estonian people of varied social, cultural and age groups. The outcome of these interviews is exhibited as a combination of video portraits and projected citations called Stories of Freedom. This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// 11 journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/3390 Video link: https://vimeo.com/251318348 12 The interview questions were loosely structured and interviewees could choose their own focus and ways of talking about freedom. Freedom is an abstract concept with which everyone has a personal relationship. There are some freedom narratives that most Estonians relate to – stories of war, deportations, occupations and independence. There Anthrovision, 6.1 | 2018 Encountering Films in the Estonian National Museum 4 are also very personal stories of freedom, as well as philosophies of freedom that people follow. The idea of Stories of Freedom was to give a voice to a number of contemporary people and thus give museum visitors a chance to relate to or debate with the ideas presented to them. The written introduction of Stories of Freedom is inspired by what the interviewees revealed to me. It reads: Freedom is regarded, among other things, as equality, material independence, privacy, an opportunity to vote, to speak, to decide for yourself, and the right to be different. The lack of freedom is associated with illnesses, crime, loneliness, work, addictions, regulations and limitations. Some people think that we are free as long as our thoughts are free, but others believe that there is no such thing as complete freedom. Some may have been able to experience a pure ecstasy of freedom in Siberian prison camp; for others, contemporary Estonian society suppresses and limits their freedom. For some, freedom is gained by learning to know the word of God in their early childhood, whereas for others, religion takes away the liberty to make decisions about their own lives. Some believe that people from different races or sexual orientations may live next to each other in a free country; others see it as taking away their opportunity to feel free. If some see consumption, study and work as liberties, others take them, on the contrary, as constraints (Leivategija 2016). 13 Stories of Freedom explores how contemporary Estonian inhabitants give sense to historical events often related to traumas of war, deportations and Soviet occupation. In addition, there are plenty of optimistic and idealistic ideas about freedom, but mostly, the exhibit is engaging with social issues about the contemporary society. Many topics that it deals with are complex and might raise disagreement among the museum visitors. As I highlighted in the exhibit introduction above, oppositions can occur when people talk about immigration, religion, LGBT issues, consumer society etc. To give an example, there are two interviewees placing the issue of multiculturalism in the context of their personal freedom, expressing their diametrically opposing perspectives: Jaano: I ... I am not a racist, but I do find that our tiny nation is such that we should care and protect it a bit more. Multiculturalism, for example, is something that I would not want for my people. This is a bit more complicated for me. I find that we already have those ‘grey passport’ holders5 ..